[Vision2020] Longtime Moscow City Clerk moving on

[Moscow Cares]

Courtesy of today's (November 28, 2015) Moscow-Pullman Daily News.

---------------------------------
Longtime Moscow City Clerk moving on
Stephanie Kalasz takes job with alma mater, WSU
Outgoing Moscow City Clerk Stephanie Kalasz usually receives quite a bit of camera time during the video recording of Moscow City Council meetings, but she is seldom the focus of attention.
Her face is usually behind the screen of a laptop computer, her hands furiously typing in the meeting minutes, unless she turns to listen to City Supervisor Gary Riedner or looks up toward the councilors.
On rare occasions, she's asked to read back what she heard the group say.
Riedner and the councilors, however, took a few minutes during the Nov. 16 meeting to focus on Kalasz, who is leaving after 12 years as the clerk to take a job at Washington State University.
"Stephanie, you've got your head ducked down. Stand up and look at us please," Councilor Walter Steed said that evening.
Kalasz started as a secretary in 1999 and soon worked directly for Riedner as an administrative secretary before moving up to the clerk's position in 2003.
"It's been great to work with her," Riedner said.
Riedner said Kalasz has spent nearly 700 hours keeping track of council proceedings in addition to her other numerous duties.
The job is described as maintaining city records "in a concise, manageable, information system designed to promote accessibility and public participation in the governmental process." Other major responsibilities of the city clerk include handling paperwork filings for mayoral and city council elections and spending a great deal of time with people requiring information.
Mayor Bill Lambert said Kalasz is the person on staff who "makes sure people get birthday cards" and other things that make a workplace "like family."
Though Kalasz said she has enjoyed her years at Moscow City Hall, she lives in Pullman and will be glad to not be driving back and forth between the two towns. Her new job as WSU public records program coordinator also comes without the evening hours required in the clerk's position.
"It was a real difficult decision to leave," she said.
She graduated from WSU with a degree in theater arts and is a Pullman native. A WSU sign has been posted on the wall behind her chair for years.
"It bothers Gary (Riedner) because he went to UI," she joked.
She said most of the time working with the public has been fulfilling and sometimes even fun - even when some of those people aren't especially pleasant.
"It always made it easier to keep in mind that all of these are all people who care about the community - and I care about the community," she said.
She said she's going to miss working at City Hall because she'll no longer be seeing her co-workers every day, but also because it's such a beautiful building. That residents here have a true sense of community will be another aspect of her job she'll miss, she said.
"It's also real interesting that not many people care about a multi-million dollar budget," but they do care about issues that affect them and the city at large, she said.
Some of most interesting topics she has dealt with during her years of employment were the raising of chickens within the city's residential areas and the furor over topless women washing cars, she said.
The second matter received a great deal of attention from media around the world.
"We were getting calls and requests for information from everywhere," she said
---------------------------------

You will be greatly missed, Steph . . .
http://youtu.be/tr4IY_x3SDQ

"Happy Trails"
http://www.TomandRodna.com/Songs/Happy_Trails.mp3

Seeya 'round town, Moscow, because . . .

"Moscow Cares"
http://www.MoscowCares.com
  
Tom Hansen
Moscow, Idaho
     
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mailman.fsr.com/pipermail/vision2020/attachments/20151128/20093830/attachment.html>